03 April 2016

Space archaeology reveals potential new Viking site in North America

The site, found using open-source Google Earth satellite images and briefly examined this past year, is "definitely not indigenous" and "definitely not historic."

“Either it’s … an entirely new culture that looks exactly like the Norse
and we don’t know what it is,” she told The Washington Post in a phone
interview. “Or it’s the westernmost Norse site that’s ever been
discovered.”..

But when they uncovered turf structures and a shallow hearth littered
with bits of cooked bog iron, they knew they’d found something
important. There is only one other pre-Columbian iron processing site in
all of North America — at L’Anse Aux Meadows. What’s more, they
found no trace of either indigenous Canadians or later European
colonists at the site — no scraps of flint, pottery or iron nails...

And very few other artifacts have been found at Point Rosee (which is
pretty typical of the Vikings — their settlements tended to
be “ephemeral,” Parcak said). The site could have been a lone outpost
for iron smelting, or part of a larger settlement. It might be the
southern and westernmost place the Vikings ever reached, or it could be
just a stopping point on their explorations to other settlements still
to be uncovered.

If her faith is borne out, researchers say that the discovery, which is
the subject of a 2-hour documentary that will air on PBS next week, has
the potential to rewrite the history of the Vikings in North America. It
might confirm the belief that the Norse presence here was fleeting —
just another short-lived expedition by a seafaring society. Or it could
touch off a wave of discoveries of other Norse settlements in the
region, proving that the Vikings strayed farther and stayed longer in
the New World than anyone realized.

My local PBS station will be airing a program entitled "Vikings Unearthed" as part of the NOVA series on April 6. Presumably that's the program referred to in the article.

1 comment:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/vikings-newfoundland-1.3515747 Potential Viking site found in Newfoundland - Satellites help locate potential Norse site in island's southwest corner

p.s. once you see the location, it makes sense that the Vikings would have gone there, as it is only a hop, skip, and sail down the coast.

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